Wednesday 22 July 2015

Axis Poems


I have experimented with concrete poems where the shape on the page is as important as the words. Here's a new (for me) type that sounds interesting. An Axis poem.

- Possibly for two voices.
- Centred on the page
- with the two halves echoing or chiming with each other but distinct
- Rhymes and heteronyms or homonyms can work well

See this one Derwent Water from Paul Hurt (I think)

He says
The rhymes of the two halves are 'along,' horizontal, but the grammatical sense is vertical, 'down' each of the two columns. Although the diction is plain and simple - 'milky' applied to light and to ice, for example - it's transformed by putting the words and phrases in the two halves of the poem in close proximity. The two halves obviously show strong contrasts of theme - summer and winter - but there are also subtle contrasts of syntax and punctuation, for example, 'still' in the half-line of the first voice, 'still and distant' is different, grammatically, from the 'still' in the half-line of the second voice next to it, 'still distant.'
More here 

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